50 years of Arena Seating
To mark the 50th anniversary of Arena Seating , its team returned to its birthplace in Newbury last month to celebrate five decades of achievement and the evolution of a business that has become a stalwart contributor to many of the world ’ s landmark sports and entertainment events . Access reports
Words : Christopher Barrett
A key player behind the London 2012 Olympic Games , Arena has been a supplier to The Queen ’ s Club Championships since the outset and has been involved in countless other mayor events over the years ; from huge stadium concerts to the London Marathon , Wimbledon Championships , The Open Championships and the inaugural Formula One Grand Prix in Saudi Arabia .
Among Arena ’ s very many landmark moments was another project in Saudi Arabia . Commissioned by the Saudi General Sports Authority , it designed and installed the 15,000-seat Diriyah Arena and hospitality structure to accommodate the Anthony Joshua ’ s 2019 heavyweight boxing fight in Riyadh . Constructed in just 56 days , it was the largest temporary seating structure Arena had built since the London 2012 Olympics
The Arena story started some 4,000 miles away , back in 1967 , at Newbury ’ s Corn Exchange Theatre . In the 1960s the town was a hotbed for table tennis , and locals Ron and Grace Smith were asked to put on an exhibition match between England and the USA at the venue .
Ron managed to acquire some temporary seating from a contact at Greenham Common air base where the seating was used for clashes between games of American football between US Air Force teams .
A draughtsman engineer by trade , Ron soon realised he was perfectly capable of creating a similar seating set up himself , and by 1971 he had launched Arena Seating , under the original branding of Arena Promotional Facilities Ltd .
Ron ’ s son , and Arena Seating managing director Terry Smith , says , “ Dad realised there might be a market for temporary seating as seemingly no one in the UK was offering it . He got together with a couple of colleagues and designed his own seating system , which remarkably , we ’ re still using to this day – it ’ s still the bread-and-butter product that we use in the UK for a lot of events .”
Smith has been working for Arena since he was a teenager , but he recalls getting involved at an even earlier age : “ I was five when the business started , I can remember often going in the lorry to sites with dad and watching the seats being built .”
At 17 Smith began working as a member of the site crew , before progressing to site manager , operations manager , and in 1999 he became operations director before being later appointed MD .
Smith says his hands-onexperience with the site crew was
Bradley Merchant
Dave Withey
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